The future of I/O connectivity is bright-literally. Intel has developed what it says is the "world's first silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers using Hybrid Silicon Laser technology." Using an integrated transmitter chip, an integrated receiver, and beams of light going through a fiber-optic cable, the prototype can transfer data at a whopping 50Gbps. More exciting still, Intel expects to be able to manufacture the components cheaply enough to make them a staple of both consumer and server I/O by the middle of the decade.

Once in a while, a high-end video card lands on my test table; in most cases just to overclock on air cooling without even the most simple voltage modifications. This time however we put the card under LN2 and found out this is a golden sample within the Lightning series. Is it the fastest running NVIDIA GPU ever?